MattB2

Welcome to my talkpage.

Feel free to leave any comments here. I'll check back fairly regularly, but the real world currently demands much of my time.

Some Top-Tips for Conflict Escalation

I'm intrested in the way that conflict evolves in on-line environments. As such, i've been trawling through many of Wikipedia's contentious articles and mediation archives. This has given me a great insight into how conflict can be perpetuated and exacerbated by a few techniques.

Here's five top-tips for really ratcheting-up the tension levels in a content dispute:

1. If in doubt, ad hominem

The first and foremost thing to remember is that an attack on your contribution is an attack on you. Respond in kind. To criticise your elegantly crafted arguments, is to demonstrate a gross lack of intelligence, manners and articulation. Make your attacker aware of this in language that even they can understand. Phrases such as: "what's your problem?"; "you always/never ... "; and "are you thick, as well as stupid?", will soon turn the most mild of spats into out-and-out war.

2. Silence dissent by claiming the moral high-ground

Remember: your contribution is 100% correct. You wouldn't have posted it otherwise. Therefore, if someone disagrees with it, they must be trolling. They can't seriously think you're wrong. A judiciously applied 'troll' label can inflame even the most mild-mannered of Wikipedians. However, should you be accused of trolling for deploying this tactic, remind others that you're simply trying to ensure that the debate remains calm and good-natured. In fact, only a troll would accuse you of such a thing.

3. Why limit your dispute to one page?

If your attacker can be so woefully wrong on this page, there's a high chance they're wrong elsewhere too. Take the fight to them. Pointing out their shortcomings on other pages they've edited, as well as at their talkpage, will ensure that the conflict expands across a number of sites. This really increases the chance of it becoming convoluted and intractable. You can also use the fact that they've engaged you in dispute across multiple sites, as grounds for an accusation of stalking.

4. Revert!Revert!Revert!

There's nothing more distressing than seeing your lovingly-crafted contribution sullied by the ham-fisted edits of a moron. So delete them; that's what the revert function is for. And if your revert is reverted? Simply revert again! Why bother giving an explanation? If they're too dense to understand your argument, they're too dense to understand your reasons for reverting. They'll give up before you do.

5. Dictatorise

So, your attacker refuses to see sense and give up? It's time to go to work on their argument. First, select a notorious dictator (Hitler and Stalin seem to be favourites for this approach; Pol Pot, Franco and Tito tend to be overlooked). Second, find a statement or argument that your attacker has made and link it to said dictator. For example: your attacker has mentioned that they have sympathies with vegetarians. Point-out that Hitler was a vegetarian. Support for their argument now becomes support for Nazism. Likewise, silencing dissent was something practiced by Stalin. To silence your argument is therefore to condone the death of millions of Russians. This technique nicely moves the debate from the contribution under discussion, to the strength of your accusations and thus the conflict is prolonged and ehnanced.

Obviously this is all meant to be taken tongue-in-cheek, yet, in the course of my research, i've observed these techniques deployed with surprising regularity